Fighting on until the bitter end

Date: April 25 2013

Bob Murphy

''We're all told at some point we can no longer play the children's game. We just don't know when that's gonna be. Some of us are told at 18, some of us are told at 40, but we're all told.'' - a scout, Moneyball

Sitting on the interchange bench while the game rolled on without me, I had to clench my jaw to keep the emotion from spilling out. It was the first time I could remember coming face to face with football mortality. The Grim Reaper.

After two hellish years of waging war against my right knee, with operations, rehab, injections, indifferent form and general torment, I thought I had finally broken through the fog.

When I came off the ground just before half-time against the Sydney Swans, mid year 2010, unable to put any weight through my leg I knew I was in strife and went straight in with the club medical staff.

I'd have to go under the knife for the third time in 18 months to find out the full extent of it. I was devastated. But more than that, I felt cheated.

I vividly remember driving to the surgeon's rooms a few days later with my wife, Justine, talking about the worst-case scenario. What would we do? Where would our young family live?

These questions were in some ways the easy ones. The harder question that I could barely ask myself, let alone answer, was, ''How will I ever fill this hole in my heart if the game is ripped away from me now?''

At that time I was 27, about to turn 28, I'd played 10 years of league footy, more than 150 games, including six finals.

I can't begin to imagine what Daniel Menzel must be going through. As a footballing community, our collective hearts are breaking for him.

While Daniel's story is perhaps the most unlucky and heartbreaking I've known in the game, in my time, he is not the only one.

There are hundreds, probably thousands of players who were cut down before their prime or even before they got out of the starting gate.

Closer to home, Shaun Higgins has had another big hurdle unfold before him in recent times. Footballers only need to hear the word ''navicular'' and they shudder. No doubt he has had his dark moments these past few days and perhaps a few more await down the road. He's young and I'm quite sure he'll bounce back. That's advice I can give to him but putting myself in his shoes, I'm not sure I could absorb that advice no matter how well intended. Tom Williams is another who has endured more than any player should have to. The courage it takes to dust yourself off (again) and jump back into it is immense.

If there is a silver lining for Daniel Menzel and the Cats it is the inspiration of his every tiny action that attempts to get back to playing. Every lap of the pool and every weight lifted will be watched by someone from within that Geelong community and it will carry a weight of spiritual significance for that person.

The sad truth is that while the circumstances might subtly change from player to player, football mortality is on the mind of all the 800 players in the league today. For some it might be the first thought in the morning, while for most it just lingers in the background. From the club champion who stands in front of his teammates and speaks through tears about his love for the game, to the young recruit who sits at his feet looking up and wondering to himself, ''Will that be me one day?''

The clock is ticking for all of us. Ignore it as we might, it could all end at any minute.

We keep moving forward, hurling ourselves from week to week, contest to contest, hoping, just hoping that one day we might be Cameron Ling - kicking a goal with his last kick in the game, to put the finishing touch on a third premiership, leaving the screams of Geelong fans to echo in his ears like the sound of the ocean in a sea shell.

His footballing death was the equivalent of a heart attack at the peak of orgasmic pleasure on a secluded Thailand beach at the age of 102. The reality for the rest of us is that we will be told, probably before we are ready to go. That is bound to happen when all we want to do is play forever.

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